Natural Guidance is currently available for Berlin, Chicago, National Capital Region of Delhi, London, Los Angeles, New York, Munich and Paris.

NAVTEQ has launched a new product that promises to materially change the way navigation systems and applications interact with end users. NAVTEQ Natural Guidance breaks new ground by enabling guidance the way people provide directions to each other — through the use of descriptive reference cues.

Launched at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, NAVTEQ Natural Guidance leapfrogs today’s linear navigation instructions - e.g. ‘turn right in 50 metres on High Street - by guiding the way people instruct each other: that is through descriptions of orientation points such as distinctive points of interest and landmarks—e.g. ‘turn right after the yellow shop” or ‘turn right at the traffic signal.’ Research shows consumers want more intuitive and practical directions because they are easier to follow and allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road. NAVTEQ Natural Guidance enables applications to use recognisable and easily understandable points of reference close to the decision point to highlight the next manoeuvre.

“Natural Guidance provides the kind of directions we want as people,” said Tiffany Treacy, NAVTEQ senior vice president of product management. “It challenges the man-machine status quo of how navigation systems have worked for years by finally enabling the kind of guidance that sounds like it’s coming from a friend who is riding along with you. This is a revolutionary first step toward more natural and ultimately more personalised experiences.”

Over the past 25 years, NAVTEQ has continually striven to create content specific to navigation which improves the user experience. Only as an expert and innovative leader in the navigation industry, was NAVTEQ able to create a product which translates user experiences into data and data models which allow applications to generate guidance with a ‘human touch’. NAVTEQ Natural Guidance also employs a variety of importance criteria to help optimise when and how the directions are presented to consumers. Reference cues can look very different - or be partially or fully obscured - depending on factors such as: direction of approach, size of the reference object (a cathedral vs. a corner pub), or whether it is winter or summer (when trees might block the visibility).

NAVTEQ Natural Guidance is currently available for Berlin, Chicago, National Capital Region of Delhi, London, Los Angeles, New York, Munich and Paris with aggressive expansion plans to add more cities throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific by the end of 2011.